Ropecon Zombie

So, Halloween is approaching fast, and I thought this would be good time to share my "realistic zombie" -look I did for Finnish roleplay convention called Ropecon. 

Warning, images might be disturbing!

First some photos of the look:

Photo by: Mikko Virta

Photo by Marko Saari

And even short video clip from Finnish news:

From Kymmenen Uutiset

Photo by: Petri Kuittinen

How did I do it?


The idea for the zombie mask came when I found the website called Nimba Creations:

Nimba Creations offers a quite large selection of different horror prosthetics for very reasonable prices.

I had the idea of how I wanted my zombie makeup to look and exposed teeth was one of the things I wanted. 

Exposed teeth/ Zombie mouth prosthetic was exactly what I was looking for, so after some clicking and paying and waiting it was mine!

All the prosthetics come unpainted, like this:

Because I know I would have hell of a hurry in the morning of Ropecon, I decided to paint the piece beforehand.

Here's pictures of the painting process:

I used basic acrylic paints (from a craft store) for painting.

Then came The Day of Ropecon (:D) and I applied the jaw for the first time (they aren't really re-usable, so there's no testing them unless you buy more than one).
Turns out my facial features didn't quite match the prosthetic. I guess my lower lip was a bit too plumpy and there was too much space left between prosthetic and jaw, so I couldn't get the prosthetic to stick firmly.

Another huge problem was the gelatin blender that came with my order. I couldn't get it to work at all so I was getting really desperate.

Finally I gave up with trying the blend the jaw, so I moved on to the sunken eyes.
I took Mehron's 3D-gel (gelatin), and started to apply it around my eyes (first I added a ton of wax to my eyebrows):

I was really nervous and annoyed by the hardships, and unfortunately that may have affected the finished look.

...loose lower part of the prosthetic, anyone?

Next step was powdering the gelatin parts...

And then the actual makeup. Grimas Crème makeup color 0A is a  perfect color for dead zombie skin, so I used that on skin and various set of different eyeshadows to add depth and shadows:

And because the devil zombie is in the details, I added plain white contact lenses to add the blank stare:

Even though I didn't want to go to the "just add a few liters of blood and you're done" zombie look, I thought the result was looking a bit too clean, so I sprinkled some blood-colored water (mix of water activated acrylic paints, facepaint and food coloring) over myself:

Here's a picture of my fingernails, because devil  zombie is still in the details:

I had few of my nails done like that, and the idea (and tutorial) I found from KlairedelysArt

PS.
Some if you may know that I collect Monster High dolls, and I started (mostly) a picture blog of MH dolls. You can find it here if you're interested: http://mhjangsara.blogspot.fi/